March is Women's History Month - Celebrate Women of
Achievement and Herstory - Episode #04 for the special
History Month 2000 observance series
By Irene Stuber
Living well is the best revenge -
Forgotten in the annals of history is Nicole-Barbe
Clicquot.
The history books record (with a flourish and a pop)
that on 08-04-1693, Dom Perignon invented champagne
(actually the champagne process).
VOILA! Let the party begin.
But wait!
Someone forgot to mention that the Dom Perignon's
sparkly wasn't drinkable because it was gritty and cloudy ...
ugh. Not even callow youths thought it worthy enough to
contribute to their hangovers.
Fast forward a hundred years of so to Mme. Nicole-
Barbe Clicquot who developed the sur pointe process that
clarified the sediment out of the sparkling wines - and THEN
the party began.
She also invented pink champagne.
But the history books list Dom Perignon as the man
who did it . . . and Mme. Clicquot is forgotten.
Luckily her process made her a *very* wealthy woman,
thus her revenge against future history's neglect of her was
living her life very nicely, thank you.
^ W ^ O^ A ^
Event 02-22-1974: The management was convinced
that the first women's exhibition/professional basketball game
to
take place in Madison Square Garden couldn't draw a crowd
so
it scheduled a men's game afterwards.
Following the women's game, the crowd of nearly
12,000 left. The men played to almost empty stands.
^ W ^ O^ A ^
Lynn Alexander Margulis, American microbiologist
who developed the symbiogenetic theory of cell evolution
(rather than the survival of the fittest) was born 03-05-1938.
Her cell findings according to noted researcher W. Ford
Doolittle, were "the signal event in cell biology."
However, her paper on it was rejected 15 times before
it was accepted for publication in 1967. And then it was
ignored.
She persisted and tweaked and did more research.
Finally in 1981 she published *Symbiosis in Cell Evolution,*
which is now considered a classic in biology.
In 1983 she was invited to join the prestigious National
Academ of Science - a mark that she was not only famous but
considered a noted scientist by other noted scientists.
At 18 she had been Carl Sagan's first wife. As such and
in spite of her Ph.D., she was expected to stay home, keep
house, care for their two children, and help him pursue HIS
career.
She divorced him saying "As a 16-year-old, I learned a
great deal from him. In marriage, I had nothing but hindrance
from him."
^ W ^ O^ A ^
Donna Shalala (b. 02-14-1941) has been Secretary of
the Department of Health and Human Services since 1992.
She
is the former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, the
fourth largest institute of higher education in the U.S.
Her mother was a ranking tennis player holding down
two teaching jobs while attending law school at night and
raising her twin daughters.
DS is quite short and rounded which belies the adage
that successful women MUST be tall, willowy, and blonde.
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